Question about playing a random news item

[LanderdFM]

Hi there, we have a question about overlaying a random news item.

We already have our regular national news overlays at the start of every hour, which always plays a pre-determined mp3 file (our news loader, an app by our news provider, constantly replaces that mp3 file with the latest news) and this works fine.

However, we also have another overlay for local news. Those are usually announcements of stuff that's happening in and around our area. We have around 20 of those items, but we only play one random one in the local news overlay.

The problem that we have is: An external party delivers those news files through FTP and puts it in a folder, and when the item is old, they remove it from there. Every day, we have to look for changes in the FTP folder, and import/remove those files from the news item list.
It would be far easier, if it would just take a random file in that folder so we don't always have to monitor for changes.
It should basically be the same as a media library, which monitors changes, but it seems like the news manager cannot play a media library item.

Another option we've considered is to make it a script that just plays the opener, random local news item and closer, but that doesn't seem right. Plus then it cannot load our soundbed.

So, what would be the best option to make the news manager load a random mp3 file from a folder?

[radio42]

The best option in that case is not to use the News Manager, but a simple Script
The News Manager lets you manage your News manually.

In your case you just want to pick X random tracks from a given folder....

In your Overlay Entry you have to ability to also choose a Script to play - do that!

The script you use/create might then only contain one single script-line using the "LoadFolder" mode!
This mode does exactly what you describe (and lets you even specify a sorting; e.g. use 'Random' here!):
You specify a folder to load tracks from (all tracks directly contained within this folder will be considered and sorted accordingly); but only the first up to 'Count' folder entries will be picked effectively by that script-line. As such specify Count=1 in your script-line.

That's it.
The script-line reloads the given folder-content each time it is executed.

[LanderdFM]

We will test this out tonight, thank you for the prompt response!
Quick question though: With this solution, is it possible to put a soundbed in it? Just on the news, not on the opener/closer jingles.

[radio42]

Yes.
In the script-line click on the flash icon in the 'Options' column to invoke the 'Track Control Options & Command Events' dialog.
In there you can specify for that resulting script-line track a 'Soundbed Track' incl. an 'Annotation'.

[LanderdFM]

Looks like this is exactly what we need, thanks for pointing it out!